Diary
Mindy Solomon is pleased to present Matt Phillips: Diary, his second solo exhibition in the gallery. With a focus on a smaller, more intimate body of work, Phillips digs into the minutia of his process and the reasoning behind his painting process.
“In our lives, some of the most important things that we say are not spoken loudly. We pull each other near to ensure that we are listening – and that we hear. We instinctively create a closer proximity between all of our senses and they communicate just as much as our words.
With these new paintings, I hope to draw the viewer into the heart of my practice. In my studio, there is a rhythm that I sustain from day to day and from one painting to the next. As I work, a rather simple vocabulary of rudimentary shapes and modulated color eventually evolves into something complex and personal. I work until the formal concerns of composition, color, and illusionism give way to the realm of the metaphorical and human.
There is a certain rhythm that permeates life: day becomes night as tides rise and fall. We live just beyond earshot of life’s metronome and yet we often feel its steady pulse. For me, the paintings in this show function like days marked by a calendar, the frames of a film, or the pages of a journal. They accentuate and heighten what generally remains constant. At the same time, I hope that the exhibition’s time signature lays bare the unexpected, dynamic, and poetic discoveries contained within each individual day of our lives.”
Phillips is a sincere, unpretentious artist. Why do I mention this? Because creating work requires a modicum of ego. The artist must believe they are good- worthy. In a time of trends and fluctuating markets, Phillips hums along. Each painting a moment of gratitude and hope…an opportunity to touch another human being- a place to be held in someone’s personal sanctuary. He does this quietly, thoughtfully, repetitively- satisfied with the outcome, secure in the fact that his soul is laid bare. For this and all that he embodies, we are grateful to showcase his works. Diary is a private journal we are privy to “read”.
About Matt Phillips
Matt Phillips is a painter living in Brooklyn, NY. His works often employ fundamental elements of painting: simple shapes, modulated values and color relationships. These rather rudimentary components are combined and remixed to produce unexpected outcomes. Color, shape, mark and form engage one another in both strange and familiar ways, becoming tense, humorous, quirky and ultimately meaningful.
Matt Phillips has had solo exhibitions at Mindy Solomon Gallery, Miami, FL; The Landing Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; Reynolds Gallery, Richmond, VA; Direktorenhaus Museum, Berlin, Germany; Studio d’Arte Raffaelli, Trento, Italy; Devening Projects, Chicago, IL; Zillman Art Museum, Bangor Maine; and Steven Harvey, New York, NY. He has participated in group exhibitions at The Pit, Los Angeles, CA; Nino Mier Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; Hollis Taggart, New York, NY; Jeff Bailey Gallery, Hudson, NY; and Ampersand Gallery, Portland, OR. Phillips has been an artist-in-residence at The Fores Project, Yaddo, and the MacDowell Colony. He is represented by The Landing Gallery and Mindy Solomon Gallery.
